The invention relates generally to turbine systems, and more specifically to systems and methods for determining operational impact on component creep life in turbine systems.
Various techniques may be used for assessing remaining useful life of power plant components such as, for example, components of gas turbines within power plant environments. Generally, each turbine component operating under certain conditions may experience a change in the state of stress due to “creep,” even if the certain operating conditions (e.g. temperature, applied force) remain constant. Moreover, any conversion of elastic strain to inelastic strain, which may be due to “creep,” may result in a reduction in stress. For example, certain conversions may include relaxation of high local stresses in areas of stress concentrations, stresses in thread root of a bolt, relaxation of displacement controlled stresses, thermal stresses, and nominal axial stress in a bolt. Indeed, because the useful life of a gas turbine component may not be a single design point, but may instead be a distribution that may be affected by the operation conditions, accurately predicting potential creep ruptures and/or the exceeding of operational limits of gas turbine components may be elusive. Accordingly, it may be useful to provide techniques to determine the remaining useful life of gas turbine components.